Israel and Fukushima

For some time since March 11, I have been unable to do anything, distracted by the fluctuating situations at the Fukushima Nuclear plant and the news from the disaster-stricken area. I have almost abandoned much of my cherished daily routine (i.e., going over Arabic news from Palestine and Iraq) and my life has been somewhat floating in the air.

My brain started emitting dopamine, however, the minute I read a March 29th news that a medical support team from Israel had finally completed setting up facilities and started running medical examinations in Minani Sanriku Town in Miyagi Prefecture. Since it was reported that Israel was preparing to send a support team of medics, on a mailing list for Palestinian issues there have been debates about pros and cons of the Israeli project. For instance, I came across a voice: “we cannot let such an aggressive state like Israel look after Japanese people,” and I became weary of.

Especially when Israel comes up as a topic, conspiracy theories tend to rule. In any case, I shall bring up some facts to contextualize the event. First of all, Israeli medical unit was the first oversea medical team that Japan accepted in the current disaster, and it was also the first time for Israel to send their medical unit to Japan. This ‘first-time’ characteristics reminds me of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, whose death toll is said to have reached over 300,000. Thee days after the quake, the first Israeli unit arrived as one of the vanguard foreign teams to enter Haiti. Soon after their arrival at Port-au-Prince, the Israel team set up an outdoor medical facility and started working; it is said that that was “the only facility that could handle complicated surgery” in the midst of chaotic situation. Eventually 236 Israelis entered Haiti, 218 of whom were soldiers and officials of IDF (Israel Defense Forces).

It is deceiving that Japanese media is calling the IDF team “medical team” and “medical staff”, for in fact all the sixty members in the current mission are soldiers and medics of National Security Forces and Medical Corps. While spectacles of the ‘active’ appearance of US military and JSDF (Japan Self-Defense Forces) may prevent us from seeing the actual situation, we must acknowledge that the IDF foreign mission is an oversea military dispatch. In recent years Israel dispatched its rescue units to, first earthquake-stricken Mexico in ‘85, and then Armenia, Romania, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, India and so on. It is obvious, perhaps too obvious, that Israel attempts to create sympathetic mood in those countries in turmoil and civil war and outside the Arab world, where critic of Israeli occupation is not conspicuous. Hence Israel’s quick decision to dispatch its rescue unit right after 3/11 was due to the fact that Japan is an ally to the US, and the position of the government that it has not criticized Israeli occupation policy for the past 30 years. While the attitude of Japanese administration was too confused to accept offers from many foreign countries for rescue and support, I shall stress the fact that Israel team was solely accepted in a very smooth fashion, though the background is unknown.

Prior to the arrival of its medical unit, Israel sent three hundred Geiger counters to Japan. They were offered by Rotem Industries, a technology supplier for the nuclear power reactors in the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, Israel. It is an open secret that Israel has been developing nuclear weapons inside this Research Center; in fact the name “Dimona” is even used as a metaphor to describe the secret. I could never have expected that the two names “Dimona” and “Fukushima” linked this way. As even the writings on its website can tell, Israel was very enthusiastic in grasping the oopotunity. But then I further learned the fact that Dimona and Fukushima had already been connected through a different link; about one year ago, Magna B. S. P. Ltd., a company also based in Dimona, had supplied their security system to Fukushima Daiichi Plant (Haaretz, March 18, 2011). The system monitors people entering the nuclear power plant, but initially it was made for preventing entries of “terrorists trying to use radioactive materials for their attack.” That is to say, TEPCO was cautious of terrorism against the power plant, while it sat on the whistle-blowing about design shortcomings of the reactors and ignored the demands for safety measures against earthquake and tsunami. There is no surprise that the supplier of the system is Israel, an “Anti-Terrorism Establishment,” whose security industries are renowned world-wide, but there is no mention of Israel in any of TEPCO’s press releases and other materials. On the other hand, truth or false, the CEO of Magna B. S. P. Ltd. boasted in the report in Haaretz that they “have signed contracts with all the nuclear power plants in Japan” to supply their security system.

All of this might be of little significance in comparison to various grotesque phenomena after 3/11, but it is just because I always lose my cool when I talk about Israel. I am at loss hearing about Sci-fi-esque portrayal of “Operation Tomodachi” by the US. France, supporting Israeli nuclear development, seems to give no room for any criticism against nuclear energy, desperately defending their nuclear policy. Thus it is not my intention to pull reader’s attention all the way to a minor axis like Israel. However, if above facts can be summarized as a tendency to focus on “anti-terrorism rather than disaster measures,” the problem is not be limited to TEPCO’s failure. In other words, one can see the same attitude in the Japanese government in prioritizing security preservation over human lives, by underestimating the danger of radiation and refusing to expand the evacuation zone.

In the wake of the disaster, many began raising voices throughout Japan, calling to take this opportunity to reevaluate Japanese society. Not only issues concerning energy policy but also those of technology and concepts of growth and development are now questioned like never before, even making appearances in mass media. While this is not a bad thing, I still find a lack of alarm against the psychological apparatus put into motion in order to keep security and order by the governance, and a lack of problematic consciousness as to how this might be co-opted into a system in the society from now on. It functions not necessarily as the authority oppressing the society from above, but by each member of the society who ends up affirming the act of authority by hiding anxiety over nuclear disaster, thinking of ‘what I can do’ for the stricken area and living calmly while doing their part in energy conservation. It is the social order in which each member is made to be the subject of maintenance. Herein the members themselves are the agent of maintaining social order, and hence complicit with the government that looks down on human lives, and incapable of criticizing the policy in the full sense.

This is a society whose members are portrayed as if they could keep their cool and were ‘calm’ whatever happens amidst the crisis. Though it is not the reality, such attitude is praised by others and Japan self-praises for it. Oversea media acclaiming Japan as the domain of “no panic, no looting” immediately reminded me, again, of Israel. One might recall during the Gulf War, Israeli society was reportedly praised for their keeping calm despite the missile attacks by Iraq, as well as IDF for restraining their counterattack. “Israelization” of Japanese society has always been my problematic, but the current beautification of calmly living everyday life in the state of abnormality might as well be called an Israelization.

One might also be reminded of, as an antipode, the festive democratic movement that arose around Tahrir Square in Egypt. Israel has long been honoring its characteristic as ‘the only democratic nation in the Middle East.’ Having been looking down on the dictatorship of the Arab world while sitting in the center of the Middle East, the recent revolutions must be significant events to the Israeli nation and people, affecting as they are their identity and reason to exist.

Concerning the democratic movement in Egypt, there has been little link to the anti-Israeli voices regarding its continued occupation of Palestine. But this could be a change of tendency in the Arab society where Israeli occupation of Palestine and Israeli government’s policies have been considered almost as normal and permanent. In other words, this could be a big change in Israelization of the Arab society. Or even if this big flow may not stop right away, at least it becomes uncertain to what direction the society is headed. Although it is unstable, the options have expanded to far beyond one-way Israelization.

In Japan too, we must not let the state foresee our direction so easily. We should not be well-behaved in this current situation where the state is obviously giving priority to social order and security over human lives. Let us release out anxiety and anger! Let us make more noises!